I worked for a company that makes Predictive Dialers and that would sum up the fact that I am familiar with the telemarketing and credit collections businesses. I called Vodafone today to know the procedure to enroll in the National Do Not Call Registry, and to my surprise the service rep told me that I was enrolled in the Service already.
The fact that she had no answer when quizzed on how I was enrolled in the service when I never requested to, should be posted on a separate topic. It seems that I have been with the NDNC since August 17, 2007 and they tell me it takes 45 days for the service to actually come into effect. I am thinking this has to do with the frequency of updates the NDNC sends to the subscribed telemarketers.
I don’t have a count but I received not less than 10 calls between September 22, 2007 when the 45 day period should have ended, and now. The rep mechanicaly told me the policy on complaints – I have to note down those numbers and provide for their ‘backend’ team to take three weeks to ‘take action’ against the telemarketers. Well, I am going to make a note of every caller from now on. That is my best bet right now.
On the other hand, I have been thinking how effective this NDNC actually is going to be. Is this meager fine of Rs500 going to stop these people from calling us, I can’t say. However, there is also a possibility that their telephone line will be disconnected. Now, what if I was a telemarketer using phone lines of provider ‘A’ and I called someone that I was not supposed to call (since he/she enrolled on the NDNC). I am charged with Rs500. or worse case, my phone lines will be disconnected. Great, so how long does it take for me to begin calling again by subscribing to phone lines of provider ‘B’? The NDNC Regulation doesn’t talk about whether or not the telemarketer is allowed to continue business with phone lines of an alternate provider. Plainly, I think TRAI is acting leniently as far as penalties are concerned here.
One of the clients in my previous job was an International Call Center that did collections business for a financial institution in the United States. I was called to let know that one of the borrowers had been called more than once within four days for a collections follow-up call, and the Call Center paid penalties of upto US $40,000. The irony was that the borrower had to pay a mere US $800. The United States Fair Debt Collection Practices Act has regulations for the number of times a collections firm can call a borrower in a given period of time. Now, that’s what I call a regulation!
